Monday, November 5, 2012

What is BIM and What is not BIM?

As you know we have been working as BIM Consultant for some developers and project owners. All of them are prestigious names in the market and almost everyone involved in the project are internationally well-known. I mean they are all BIG BOYS!

When we are all around one table, we are having quite interesting discussions. An in my opinion, the most interesting one is defining what is BIM and what is not!

You are designing a building so you defined the geometry. Next step will be documenting it, right? So the model has to have information that will help contractor to built it. Contractor should add more information to manage his construction efficiently. Time and cost data should be added at this stage.

The above are the butter and bread of the construction work.
But why an owner is interested in BIM?
What attracts an owner most?

According to IFMA, 75% of a building's life cycle cost is spent on operations and maintenance.

So for an owner, having an as-built model which can be used for Facilities Management is the most important thing.

Having said this, if your model is only "B M" and lacking the "I", then how can you use it for FM?

To sum up, please do not put a software into BIM category if it can not store construction information. Some tools are just for modeling and that's the reason they are developed for.

I just summed up above but suddenly I remembered an old neighbor of us. Their son was absolutely in love with Excel. Actually he was crazy about it.

One day he was showing us why he is so impressed with Excel! He did some tricks in front of us and started to play a video in one of the cells.

3 comments:

Hello Mrs Diyane,as always waiting for your new issue and really that's so excellent point to describe BIM from cause the (I) is sure the most important latter,also i was attracted by fact of 75% for O & M but i felt confused as the diagram is showing the opposite (only the color reflexed),sorry and thanks a lot for your innovative issue.